Sunday, September 27, 2015

Painting the motif - art for art's sake

There are 3 major motif in painting, the still life , the landscape,
and the portrait. It is the
abstract qualities of brush and color and the artist's expression that
go into the creation of the image. I discovered fairly early on in my
artistic expression and exploration that the abstract nature of reality
is the source of beauty. Or simply put, reality is beautiful! (and
abstract) Paradoxical?.

Anyway, I think most of us could agree
that our world and culture in general is in some serious trouble. It
may be that things are going to get more insane over the next years. I
mean, really, assassinations because of a cartoon??!! How does that
psychology get healed? And how long will that take?? Then there are the
issues with the super wealthy sucking the life out of the culture just
because they can and one billion just isn't enough. We should legislate
a limit to personal wealth! Then there are the issues of global
warming and the extinction of animals and the continuing degradation to
the environment and food sources, pretty much all at the hands of the
wealthy and their corporate interests. Will the tide turn in time to
even save our species? It is a definite maybe, maybe not! What is an
artist to do?

Art transcends any of these issues. As an artist
and human, I feel it is my responsibility to pursue my vision of beauty
as the expression of consciousness that I know it to be! Do I need to
illustrate the violence and depravity of the world. I could. But would
it really do any good? Look at Goya's fabulous etchings of 'the
disaster of war'. Done a few hundred years ago, didn't seem to do much
by way of waking people up to ending war and its horrors. The value of
Goya's work is the aesthetic genius and execution that went into
it, and even with these dramatic scenes, he 'transcends the subject.' As
Antonio would say.

Art is an aesthetic science that of its
essence involves a consciousness that transcends the external, sometimes
hard realities of our day to day lives and the struggles we have to
survive and thrive. A work of art is a doorway into psychological,
spiritual space. A contemplative doorway. An object of meditation.

Dance,
Music, painting, sculpture, literature can reflect and illustrate the
issues of the day, but their real value always lie in the realm of
art for art's sake, the realm of the transcendent human spirit. The
arts are nuts and bolts mysticism. They don't require belief. They
simply require your presence and receptive attention. Then you are
transported within, ever more deeply.

I make the conscious
decision as an artist, to focus on the primal and primary beauty of
these fundamental motif. Thestill life. A flower and some objects in
the world, a vibratory world of color and form. Flowers symbolic of
enlightenment and archetypal beauty. The landscape. Light and air,
green and blue, sky and earth, water, home, merging into life
energy-prana in the moment to moment ecstasy of self and color and brush
and world. The portrait. Honoring the human and its face in all its
psychological beauty manifesting as well in this aesthetics of
spontaneity.

The rightful place of art is to inform the politics,
inform the sociology, the human, with transcendence. Not to be reactive
as its primary impulse but rather to create the culture. Moment to
moment where the culture truly lives. Here and now. In us all. Not
outside anyone.